More from France

We started yesterday morning in Cluny. We had arrived there after the Verdon Gorge and we walked around in the evening. We had dinner at a little tiny bistro/bar there and the locals found us fascinating since Cluny is now a small small town. One man was talking to Tabea and thought it was interesting that she was from Germany until I came back and he found out I was from the States. "But that's so far away" he said shocked. To Cluny it must be terribly far away. Also the owners had their dog, Chablis, in the restaurant, not an uncommon thing in Europe, and she kept coming over and leaning against Tabea, a big white Golden Retreiver, probably mixed with something. It was a nice dog. We saw it again the next day as we walked through the city. We went to the ruins of the Abbey, once the largest church in Chrisendom, prior to St. Peter's being built in Rome, for hundreds of years one of the most important places of Christian scholarship and monastic life. It was dismantled and the stones were sold for other buildings in the 1790s because, basically, the French Revolution had made such things not particularly acceptable. So it was in that place for about 1000 years and then just dismantled.

The next morning we went over to the museum of the abbey and there they had an amazing display of old books, which I was amazed by, the Chapter Annals from the 15th century, some illustrated copy of Eusebius, the argument, which happened in Cluny, of whether Mary was, in fact, a virgin. There was a death record book "of the saints" listing the death date of all the people in the monastery and associated abbeys and monasteries. Tabea really really liked the stones displayed on the first floor of the museum, and they were interesting, but for me the books were the best.

After that we went 12 KM north to Cormartin (or something like that) to the Chateau there. It was amazing because it had been restored very nicely. The gardens were especially nice with a great hedgemaze with a tower in the center. I found the middle, Tabea didn't. Of course it was totally luck. It was a boxwood hedgemaze that was grown just above my eye level, so you could really get a sense of being a little lost and trying to find your way.

After that we went stopped at a vinyard and bought some wine to bring back to Germany and then went to Metz. The Cathedral there is amazing actually. I wasn't expecting it to be so grand. But the outside was a little too elaborate for me with all sorts of flying buttresses and statues of saints and pictures of Jesus separating those on his left to be eaten by a monster and those on his right to go into the gates of heaven. A bit much for my taste. But it was a neat city, very baroque in many places. And it was the most modern of the cities we'd seen. Tabea said you could really tell that people there worked.

Then we went home all the rest of the way "shot the moon" as it were because we were only 5 hours away. We saw a nice sunset on some fields in France and thought it was interesting that immediately after going over some little hills you entered Germany and forests. There weren't really any forests in France-- except a little in the mountains. But Germany is all forest. We got home at 2 and then I slept in late this morning, went shopping in Regensburg while Tabea did her laundry at a laundromat and stopped by the office. Now I am packed and ready because now we will go to Munich for a birthday party for our friend Clemens and then for Katarina (the one whose wedding I went to earlier) is having a picnic by the river the next day. And then I leave. So the journey is almost over. And I am ready to come home to test if I am actually able to speak to people in English anymore and if I am able to drive a car and use a cellphone. It's been a long journey here. And a good one. An interruption of my life as it is and was. I've learned a lot.

I had no idea that southern France was so sort of poor and rural. We never went over to the Cote d'Azur region because we just decided we were already doing enough and we didn't need to drive that much more in the mountains and there were so many crowds everywhere it wasn't worth it. It was enough for me in France. The people I talked to were wonderful. One little girl who was with her mother at their fruit stand on the Valensole Plateau (famous for lavendar) in the Provence was reading the Twilight series of books. It was funny because when she heard I was American she showed me her book because she was so excited to meet me. Of course most of you know that I have a personal hatred of those books because I think they do a grave disservice with their underlying messages. So it was funny. I told her I hated them. Her mother laughed. We had a great conversation, mostly in French, but a little in English. The mother told me she had been a very very good student of English when she was in school but that it had been a long time ago. Tabea was shocked at how big the tomatoes were that she had for sale and she explained that her husband planted them inside in March and then outside when the weather permitted and that he loved them and cared for them like children. It was funny. We told her to thank him for being so loving to them so that they were so nice. We bought some and ate them and tehy were good. We stood and talked to her for a half hour or 45 minutes. This is the sort of thing that Tabea and I really enjoy doing. And there was a great gal at a boulangerie (deli basically) in a little village 100 KM north of Aix en Provence. That woman helped me when I was trying to ask the other gal which of the awesome looking tarts was her favorite. But I clearly don't know how to ask that question because I tried asking several people that several different ways in French and they always look very confused. But if they know English, then I can always ask them and they understand. So there is somehting I am doing wrong in the French there. But that gal was very nice and she talked to me for a while, in English and asked how we came to be in the village and etc. And then there was the man who owned the internet cafe in Riez. He was super super nice to us. He could speak English and was one of those people that you wonder how he is in the small town he is in. He is married and the family owns this business, so it makes sense, but he clearly has a sense of the larger world. He's been to the states and Canada and Mexico-- a 6 month trip. And he knew computers so well and helped us. Tabea finally was able to charge her phone with him and he let us sit there with it. He kept coming over and talking to us. Probably there are some tourists in his cafe from time to time because Riez is one of the Provencal towns that is famous for lavendar, on the Valensole Plateau, or near it, but I think he really had fun talking to us.

The dogs and people of France are indeed warm and amazing. The landscape is so incredibly varied, the architechture so consistent.

I really loved France.

Something lighter

The food in France is great. It really is. The bread is bread, true, but it is good. But what is crazy is that you can eat some seemingly innocuous side dish and suddenly wonder why you have never eaten such a thing before.

I had a spinach-egg slice thing that was on the side of my dish. I tried it. It was like eating cake and vegetables and eggs all at once, but in a good way. I couldn't place what they'd done to the eggs. Cream, yes of course, but what else? It was light and fluffy but made me think of home and Grandma and laughing with Jenny Penny. Tabea later told me that she had heard that French cooks often use nutmeg in their eggs. That was the secret ingredient I am sure, but I am also sure that if I add nutmeg to my eggs in Syracuse, choirs of gastrological angels will not be singing. It was amazing.

Today I had duck a l'orange. Yes, duck is greasy, but it was soooooo good. It was the plate du jour and we were late for lunch (everything in all but the very biggest cities closes for the afternoon. If you dont' eat by 1 or 1:30, just forget it. Food is not something to be taken for sustenance or on your way somewhere. You don't just stop in a restaurant in France it seems, you somehow plan it. But the people in the diner today had pity on us and fed us. We could only choose the plat du jour. I said we'd have two. And we had duck a l'orange for 10 euros each. Imagine! So it was pretty amazing.

We are seriously contemplating going to McDonalds just to see if the mere presence of France can make such a thing better. It's possible. Everything seems to taste better here. We buy fresh produce from the farmers on the side of the street or in the unused space in the roundabout. We buy bread every day. And we had poire au chocolat tarte one day. Pretty nice.

Food is just better here.

Mory

This is not necessarily a happy story. Don't read it Mom unless you want to cry.

One day Tabea and I were driving on a road back to our campground in Maussanne. We'd been on the road before. It is a highway, which means you go pretty fast between the requisite every-kilometer roundabout. And suddenly we both saw something in the road. Tabea slammed on the breaks; we stopped well in front of a young terrier. A few other cars stopped, we pulled to the side. We got out. The pup was friendly, it was seemingly in good health, not scared, but not aggressive. It seemed to be about 3 months old, maybe a bit more, but not fully grown. After I was sure it wasn't going to bite me or freak out, I picked it up. It's poor heart was racing. I held it and Tabea got water for it-- it was hot. We gave her (we now knew) water. She drank happily for a minute. Then she went back into the street. Cars avoided her. Tabea grabbed her back. We were both contemplating. What should we do? Tabea said that in Germany the police would care for such a dog. But, we had no way of finding the police. I wanted to take the dog in the car with us, but then what if she had owners? We hemmed and hawed. The dog went back into the street seemingly unaware of any danger. But she had so many cockleburs in her fir I knew she'd been out for a while-- how could she not appreciate the danger?

Eventually Tabea and I left. We didn't know what to do. We went to the next town 1.7 km away. There we found the only thing open on a Sunday-- the gas station. I went inside and asked the woman if she spoke any English. None. So I would have to do this the hard way.

"Une Chienne est dans le rue."

The woman looked confused.

"Une Chienne est dans le grand rue."

She wasn't getting any less confused.

"Qui aidez la chien?"

Which almost means something like "who can help the dog?"

Finally the woman understood I was talking about a dog and a road. She kept asking if it was dead.

"Non, pas de mort" I said. I think that's something close to "no, not dead".

After a while she came to understand that it was a tiny dog--I was almost crying.

"Une petite chienne" I pleaded.

She told me I could call the firemen and told me the number. Since it was sunday, everything, even the police, were closed. But Tabea's phone was uncharged.

Finally she said she would take the dog for the night and then take it to the police the next day. So we went back for la petite chienne.

And we never found her. She hadn't been hit. That we knew. We looked for a half hour.

Since she'd been on the street the whole time before and since so many other cars had stopped while we were with her, we figure some lucky french family has adopted Mory, named after the town we found her near.

I think about her standing there helpless in the street wondering why I put her down and went away. I will probably always cry for Mory. Tabea later said that she was, at first, scared of the dog because she didn't know what it might do, but that she had seen it was pretty tame and thought she should rescue it and smuggle it into Germany and adopt it. I didn't know that. She didn't know that I was thinking there must be a way to somehow make sure it was adopted. We weren't able in that moment to figure out the right thing to do. We weren't able to make that decision spontaneously in this vast unknown of France that we are in. Possibly at home we'd have done something different. I ultimately made the decision, not Tabea, and said we should go.

And so we drove away with Mory in our rearview mirror staring at us as we left.

Bonne Chance ma beau chienne!

The Flavors of Provence

We've left the Provence. Tonight we are staying in a hotel in Cluny because it is rainy and we found one for not much more than the tent. Last night we were in the mountains of the Verdon River Gorge. Amazing scenery. Puts Colorado and even the Tetons to the test. We were camped along the river and it was very very cold last night. So we decided to do a little splurge on a hotel tonight so we didn't freeze two nights in a row.

Provence is almost more than I can tell. We did the normal stuff-- found a field of blooming, uncut lavendar despite all the locals' protests that it was all cut by mid-August. Most was cut, but we found our field. We saw the Mediteranean sea, though I didn't go in because we saw it from the tops of cliffs. We went next to it once but it was terribly crowded. So I have been next to, but not in, the Med. Sea. We saw olive trees, and the sun-blanched grasses. There were beautiful cyprus trees and large trees planted eons ago lining the roads. We saw the most complete Roman Arena, an Aqueduct that looks like it was built 20 years ago, but is really dating in the thousands. There were ninety-nine million roundabouts. We always meant to count them, but got tired after an hour when we were about at 20. All that driving around roundabouts was excellent practice, however, for Tabea for driving on the Verdon River Gorge highways. First, to say it is a highway comes with the caveat that sometimes there will be a stop light and you will sit and wait for oncoming traffic to come through so you can go through a space not bigger across than a king sized bed. And that's through the cities and villages of local cream-colored stone. The actual driving in the canyon was much worse. In some places, the rocks are cut away just enough so a car can pass under, on one side, and the other is unfenced with no shoulder to a monstrous drop. Then there are French drivers. . . needless to say, I could have done without my fear of heights those days we did that drive. It's also interesting to note that there really isn't enough room for two cars to go side by side in some places and there is no visibility. Many of the French would just honk as they went around each curve, and that meant something like the tempo of the 1812 Overture because there were blind curves every 50 feet. But apparently we are just amatuers at this sort of mountain living because there was a bus we met around a curve once. Behind him and ahead of us were motorhomes. It was a hairpin turn. The Motorhome was just able to squeak by in front of us and Tabea had to actually go backwards to let the bus through. The bus was on the cliff side and I will never forget that as all of this is happening and Tabea and I and probably the other drivers are freaking out, the bus driver, full commercial touring bus, yawned. HE YAWNED!

Provence is a swirl of colors for me. The purple of lavendar which you can sometimes smell on the wind just as you drive by, maybe it is because they are cutting it then, maybe that's just how it is. The pale tired blue of the sky. The deep blue of the Mediteranean sea. The gold of dead grass. But not the brown dead of winter, a sort of too-hot-to-move bleached tired color-- lazy grass is what it looks like. And the silver of olive tree leaves. And the dark green of the cypruses. The turquoise water of the Verdon River-- the only other place with water like that is Banff-- some sort of chalk or lime in the water I guess. The local stone. Everywhere old houses and villages sitting on the sides of cliffs, citadels and church spires all from the local stone. Those are my memories of Provence.

Switzerland and France

Today we drove from Tobias, Tabea's oldest brother's, house in Konstanz to Provence. We are in a hotel tonight because we arrived later than the campground was open due to some road construction and having a little trouble finding the right gas station and getting a late start from Tobias' house. But now we've done all the driving and everything else will be day trips.

Switzerland was surprising to me. I thought it would look like Rocky Mountain National Park, but it just didn't. You don't really drive in mountains in Europe ever, it appears. There are always huge valleys and they dig giant tunnels through the mountains longer than the Eisenhower or just as long anyway. So it basically looked like Germany. But then we got to France. We arrived in France just west of Geneva. It was beautiful from the start. We went through some pretty big mountains and tons of tunnels and then headed over towards Lyon and south to Avignon where we are tonight. The valley that went south from Lyon was amazing. The west side was tons of treed mountains, in the distance. The valley floor was cultivated with corn and other crops, often vinyards-- the corn surprised me. On the East side, however, were mountains like I've never seen. There is something haunting about this particular range of mountains. They have large patches of white rock that almost looks like snow, but isn't. Otherwise they are treed-- coniferous forests mostly I think. But then there was one grouping of granite-like mountains rising up behind the others in gray, a stark contrast to the dark green and white of the closer mountains. There isn't really a way to describe it and we were trying to get south quickly so we didn't stop. But it was amazing.

Tonight we are in Provence and it is very clear. We were driving in as dusk and the sunset behind the Western mountains was very nice. Everywhere there are fields growing something, most often sunflowers, and there are always cyprus and bushes between the fields. It is not so much a patchwork as an embroidered landscape with the cyprus and light green coniferous lowgrowing bushes interlacing with the golden grasses. Everything had a beautiful filtered light as we drove through because of the sunset. There were several old, old villages perched along the tops of the mountains. And once there was a 10th century castle. It had obviously been somewhat (at least) restored, but it was really cool perched on top of one of the white stone and dark forest mountains.

Tomorrow we are going to investigate Avignon in the morning. For a period, the Popes had their residence in Avignon. They called it the Avignon Papacy and it had to do with some unrest in Rome and a dispute with the Holy Roman Emperor because the popes wanted too much political power. So the papacy was moved to France, the popes during this time were French. (By the way this was the majority of the 14th century.)

After that we'll go to the campground and then set up and then to the sea (we are staying very near the sea already.)

I don't know for sure if the campground will have internet or not; it depends on whether we are able to get into the campground we originally booked for despite having missed the first day of our reservation. Even if it does have internet, I didn't bring my car charger converter for my computer so I won't be able to use my computer unless they have a lounge or something in the office area of the campground.

Anyway, hope all are well. Things here are great.

I have a dissertation subject. It is amazing how travelling and talking with other people really helps my thinking, but now I have completely figured out what I want to write about and how to go about it. This is a major breakthrough as before I only had a general idea. I haven't finished my papers, but actually this is an even more important accomplishment. I am excited to begin work on this once I get back to Syracuse. In the meantime, I am going to continue to soak up as much as possible and work on language as much as possible. My German got pretty good indeed by the end, considering the time I had here, and my French seems to be getting us by for now.

Actually it is sort of funny. I keep throwing German words into my French and then the French speaker to whom I am talking keeps switching to English. It is quite obvious to them that I am American, apparently, and so they go to English instead of German even though the reason they know my French is not great is because I throw in German words. Pretty funny.

Goodnight all,
w

A few pictures from the Baaders'

Pictures, from top to bottom:

1. Me in the upstairs attic "window" of the Baader's 18th century home.

2. Johannes and I in Nico's kayak.

3. The Baader's cool front door that looked like it belonged on a castle. The only change was to make a new lock so that the key wasn't the size of a shoebox.

4. The family in front of the house, Tobias is missing of course.

5. Nico in his natural habitat, fixing some part of a car with grease everywhere. He let me help. Then he explained to me exactly how a clutch transmission works. Pretty cool to know. And you really learn it when you have to fight for communication.

After Last Year . . .

when Tabea helped me move all of my not inconsiderable belongings across the country, I thought I would never be able to repay her. Then she asked me to help chaperone her Church's youth group trip to the Czech republic. I told her she could keep the change.

Tabea and I took (along with one German man in charge of Youth from their congregation) 13 teenage German girls to the middle of the Czech Republic. There we stayed in the church of another Czech congregation. Actually there was much more house than church there.

The giggling which we endured in those 5 days is beyond what I can describe, of course, but also interesting was the fact that the girls were non-stop playing music, of course in English, on their cellphones. So we also had badly projected teeny-bopper music for 5 days.

On the first two days we had to work for the Czech congregation in order to pay them back for letting us stay. We divided into two groups, and I went with the man (Martin) and 7 girls into the forest to "make firewood" as I was told.

--- since the girls all spoke SOME English from school, I could communicate with them. Also my German improved dramatically over the five days. But all the announcements Tabea made and much of the rest of the time was in GErman and too fast for me to really understand, so often I was in the dark on things and just followed blindly. Sometimes I asked a girl to translate for me and I would get the gist of things, but sometimes I just had to hope I was doing the right thing.

So I proceeded to head out with Martin and the girls that morning to the forest. After walking uphill into the forest of a small mountain for 45 minutes we arrived. I was pretty panicked as we went because I couldn't imagine the 7 girls who were walking with us yeilding hand axes and chopping down trees, but that seemed from the descriptions I was getting, to be what would happen. When we arrived in the forest, exhausted, however, it turned out that the trees were already felled but were in their respective places on the hillside amongst the still-growing trees. We had to "shlepp" (the correct German verb in this case) the trees down to a central collecting place that ostensibly a truck could come and pick them up. The trees were often only 8 inches in diameter as they are a kind of pine tree that grows thickly, much like lodgepoles, but they were often 15-20 or even more feet long. We had ropes that we could put on the trees and then pull them down and actually a single girl, despite being technically smaller and weighing less, could actually pull one down the mountain because the incline was so steep. Getting back up the mountain each time was not particularly easy of course because you were tired after pulling them down and then you had to turn around and climb back up. The girls began to complain after about a half hour and we were supposed to do it for 4 hours or more. Martin was doing nothing to supervise or jolly up the girls, just pulling down the trees. So I made up a game wherein the girls came to a central location higher up that Martin and I pulled the trees to and then two girls came at a time to get them and bring us their ropes. The girls who brought each tree down could then call out the next girl who had to go to the higher receiving point. This actually worked well for a while and helped the girls to rest a bit between trips up and down. After an hour and a half, and two hours or more earlier than we were supposed to, we left and came back to the house (after walking again 45 minutes). It was exhausting, hot, buggy work. And when we got back, I slept for an hour or more.

Then in the afternoons we had lunch at 2. The food was only marginal without a lot. But we managed somehow. In the evening, I taught the girls the cup game from camp. That was fun. Also I had brought the stuff for friendship bracelets. We gave the girls the opportunity to make them and they had no interest. So then Tabea and I were sitting on our bed in the big room where we all slept and I was showing her how to make the finger weave variety and soon a few little curious eyes were popping up. By the train ride back to Germany on Sunday, everyone had at least two on their arms and they were begging for more embroidery floss to make more.

You see, being American, I was quite the novelty for the girls. So I had a certain cache with them that could make them help a bit more or make them cheer up a bit more or whatever. Also my camp counseling experience gave me a serious leg up on the other adults because they hadn't had any training. There were two girls who were also something like adults, 18 year olds who were supposed to be helping. They were, to some extent, and had planned some games for the first night, but they were not particularly older than the rest of the girls (who were 13 and 14) so they weren't terribly helpful all the time. One afternoon two of my favorite girls, Kathi and Anna, spent an hour or two teaching me German grammar. It was fun for them and helpful for me and they (of course accidentally) learned more English by having to explain things to me. It was cool and I called them both "Professor" for the rest of the trip. I think they liked that. Both of those girls seemed like minature versions of Tabea and I and so we loved them. They were more serious, didn't play music from their cellphones, helped with the work, didn't complain, etc.

There was another girl who bears mentioning here-- Helena. She was the tallest and blondest and loudest of the girls. And when we first were going to CR, I was worried because she seemed like she might really be trouble. And yes, she could complain like nobody's business. But she also worked the hardest of the girls. And she would help if you asked. And she would do what you said. Tabea said in German she was actually pretty mean to one of the other girls, an outcast, but I couldn't understand that part. And she really was good otherwise. And apparently when Tabea told her to cut out making fun of the other girl she did and didn't start again. It was just funny to be around her because she was quite a force of nature. And she cussed in English like a drunken sailor recently out on parole who had stubbed his toe. So I actually told her when she was saying "fuck" that this isn't really a very acceptable thing to say in English-- they don't really know that because they only hear the music, etc. and don't have the cultural understanding as young teenagers of another culture. So I taught her to say "crap" instead and it stuck. So all the girls were saying "oh crap" instead of cussing and, although crap isn't necessarily the nicest thing in the world, it is much nicer to hear 13 and 14 year olds saying that all the time than the other things they were saying which were rather jarring when that was really all you could pick out of a conversation.

Anyway, the second day of work, apparently, would have been boring if we were just dragging tired, giggling young teenage girls 45 minutes up a mountain to drag logs bigger than them down with ropes. So it was pouring rain. Therefore, the forest floor was slippery in the spots we had worn paths in from dragging logs down the day before. So now there were tiny girls slipping down the slopes of this forested mountain with logs bigger than them. Good thing we weren't boring. Actually early on that day I was bringing a pointed log down and it slid into the back of my leg (when I stopped, it didn't) and I have a giant bruise and I said "oh Crap!" So I was rather irritated because I was wet and there were no less than 10 flies landed on my face at any given time with more buzzing around my ears. So I didn't have the capacity to jolly up the girls and I just ordered them to bring 3 more each and then 2 more each, etc. Then Martin and I pulled the rest down ourselves. Probably I should have worked harder to make the girls help, but with the weather conditions and my mood, it was just better to do it ourselves. I was absolutely more exhausted than I have been in a long time when we finished.

We went back early again that day, but there was literally nothing more I could have done and our (albeit cursory) survey of the mountain showed we had gotten most or maybe even all the felled trees anyway. That was definitely an adventure. And I don't think in a million years you could have done that in the US, the liability possibilities were astounding me as I was doing it. I was, of course, always trying to be conscious of safety and ways to make the process better, but it was still dangerous I knew. Nevertheless, I think we minimized the danger as much as possible and the only one who was hurt at all was me and that was just because I was taking something too heavy by myself to try to be an example for the girls. It was stupid and it was only painful, not worse. And now I have a nice purple decoration on the back of my leg.

The picture on the top of this page is of the pile of logs we had accummulated at the end of the second day.

Anyway, the rest of the trip was fine insofar as the girls did mainly what they wanted and didn't give us much trouble. At night twice it became clear that they were getting dressed up at bedtime and wanted to sneak out, but that was easily avoided. There was a carnival in the little village where we were and they were all terribly boy-crazy and wanted to go out there. Tabea said they could go out between 8 and 10 at night if they had an adult with them. They wanted me to go with them, probably because they could plan sedition openly in front of me in quickly-spoken German and I would have no idea. So I took them the first night to the town square and stood around, in the misty rain, but then when they spoke German and English to a few Czech older teenage boys who were drinking and the boys were obviously really annoyed by them, I gathered them up and took them home even though they really didn't want to go. It was good because I heard the boys curse them out a bit when the girls didn't hear. Tabea says the Czechs get really annoyed when Germans come to their country (which is much much poorer than Germany but shares a long border) and speak German to them and expect them to understand. So I gathered the girls and took them home and we proceeded to keep them busy until 10 every night thereafter so they wouldn't ask to go into town.

I learned a lot about friendship on this trip. It didn't occur to me to be upset about going or be mad at Tabea for the work I had to do. Of course you do that. As she helped me shlepp boxes out of my house for hours and hours and hours last year, so I shlepped trees. And it was interesting to see the girls interract. Certainly different from American girls. They walked always hand in hand through the villages and cities we were in. They sat on each other's laps and were very demonstrative. It was interesting.

But most of all, I learned about friendship because Tabea was in charge of this whole event, being the Pastor. Because I didn't speak the language they were speaking, I had to just trust her and blindly follow. This isn't particularly easy. But she looked out for me and always tried to make sure I was okay and that I was understanding what was going on. On the other hand, the other "adults" Martin and Anka, one of the 18 year olds, were not really helpful and undermined Tabea's authority with the other girls. They wanted to, for example, order pizza the last night when we had lots of leftovers and groceries to clean up. Tabea thought it was a bad example to waste all that food and really was disrespectful in front of the Czech pastor, Hynok, who may have had to struggle a little for food from time to time. So I helped Tabea make dinner and convinced her that we needed to offer the girls more than noodles with Ketchup and butter sauce (which is a particular favorite of teenagers) and we together made a pretty darn good dinner for the girls in a very short time. She listened to me and I only questioned her in private. We bore the grumblings together and defended each other. It was a bit like a marraige and we were the parents and even the "adults" were our kids.

On the last night, Martin and Anka led open sedition against Tabea's rules. She wanted the girls to get some sleep, but they thought the girls should be able to stay up as late as they wanted. It was a trying night for Tabea but eventually we got some sleep.

The next day we took 13 tired teenagers and one annoying and not particularly favored German man back to Regensburg on 4 trains, narrowly catching connections and getting delayed over and over again. But we delivered everyone safely home. It was a success. The girls I think learned something, certainly improved their English, had a great time.

And I learned a lot too. And I do really care about all those girls and hope they will succeed in life. It was hard to see that some of them may be pointed in the direction of a difficult path-- wearing skimpy clothes and being overly boy-crazy and dependent on male attention, for example, and not very confident. I hope they all find their way.

It was overall a great experience and one I don't think many people get, to see into the lives of kids of another culture when they are pushed into different directions and when they are somewhere else apart from their parents, etc. And it was a beautiful place. The landscape there is really nice. And it was fun a lot of the time.